


And sympathy

by breathedout



Series: Passchendaele ficlets [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Afternoon Tea, F/F, Family by Marriage, Frenemies, I mean, Infidelity, O Canada, Performative Self-Presentation, World War I, not exactly infidelity but spoiler:, that's where we're headed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 06:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: Halifax, Nova Scotia: October 1915.Emma'd had a letter, a few weeks before.





	And sympathy

**Author's Note:**

> The folks over at [femslashficlets](https://femslashficlets.dreamwidth.org/) on Dreamwidth are hosting a year-long, 15-ficlet challenge where all the prompts are Janelle Monáe lyrics. I'm using them to create a little cycle of exercises using characters from the three established or hinted-at f/f pairings in the original novel I'm working on. So all of these tiny character studies will be related to one another, and all except three of them will be either Louise/Hazel, Rebecca/Katherine, or Emma/Maisie. Anyone interested in getting to know my characters a little bit as I flesh them out is welcome to follow along!
> 
> This story was written for the prompt "Heaven is betting on us."

Emma'd had a letter, a few weeks before. Maisie—with her characteristic lack of acknowledgment that Emma herself had been managing a household alone for over a year now, thank you, and had done for ages before she and Paulie had even met—had been practically audible through her personalised stationery. It was Rowland, she'd said. He'd left, she'd said. He'd gone and enlisted as a medical officer in the admittedly glorious and yet perilous and also—more importantly, one got the impression— _inconvenient_ CAF; and this despite his exemption from even hypothetical conscription due to the inarguably essential work he was doing here at home, the _angel_. And oh, Maisie'd wailed, via her flawless calligraphic flourishes, what would happen now? Here she was, abandoned, not even her mother to succour her, with only the children and the housekeeper and the two maids and the au pair and the cook, and the quarter-time gardener that remained to them: they'd go to rack and ruin. 

Emma, amidst the piled-high dishes and books on her kitchen table, had cried laughing. To imagine Rebecca, sitting down in the front room of the farm she and Paul Senior ran near-singlehandedly, to open a perfumed missive: _Oh Mama, drop everything: the gardener is quarter-time_. If Jack were here, Emma'd thought. How he'd howl. But of course, he'd enlisted before anyone. And then, shortly after, her—shortly after, Paulie'd gone. So Emma would have to chuckle at Maisie on her own. 

And then she found herself in Halifax, on simply the most beautiful October day. They'd marched in solidarity with their sisters in Manitoba, and she had read a passage from Mary Ann Shadd which had been surprisingly well-received despite the obvious contrast of Emma's skin and clothes with the sea of white women in Christian Temperance drab. Anyway the whole experience left her well-disposed toward life. Who wanted to board a train at teatime, after a morning like that? She'd given it a fortnight; possibly Maisie had gotten a hold on herself. 

Maisie, predictably, had gotten a hold on no such thing. Although she did come down the stairs with her mounds of blonde hair piled ornately atop her head, and a lacy lavender afternoon dress ruffling around her hips and around the plump curving arms which she held out despairingly to Emma as she descended, her neat shoes matched exactly to her dress. Still, Maisie insisted: she was hopeless, _hopeless_.

"I'm _utterly_ at sixes and sevens," she told Emma; then glided, by Emma's side, into the parlour, where the corner of the table was already set for two. A tiered silver sandwich tray, and a steaming teapot. Emma supposed she must have ordered them when she'd seen her coming up the walk.

"You know," said Maisie, sinking dancer-like into her chair after Emma took the other, "he hardly even discussed it with me? I'm sure I don't know what they need him for; we're bound to be blessed with victory any day. And now I can't stop _thinking_ about—they get leave, don't they? How often does Paul come back?"

"Once," said Emma, sipping her tea. It was, of course, steeped perfectly. "So far." 

"Once! In over a year, oh dear, dear." In her little hands Maisie wrung a lavender-edged handkerchief, and then she leaned forward: those blue entreating eyes. She gave the impression, via this manoeuvre, that the person with whom she was talking was the only one in the whole of Christendom who could possibly help her; save her; counsel her: that she, lost lamb, depended on whoever-it-was _implicitly_. Emma had often wondered if Maisie consciously decided to do this, or if it came to her as a natural and instinctive by-product of being handed everything she'd ever thought to want in life: either way, it worked. Incredibly, Emma could feel it working on her, now, even as she also itched to shake the woman. On top of it all, it seemed having a friendly face to wail at did shockingly lovely things for Maisie's complexion. 

"What do you think," Maisie asked her, excruciatingly earnest, taking Emma's hand in her own silky little paws. "Should I wait, then? To make a decision about the sun-room off the garden?"

Emma choked on her tea, but passed it off as a coughing fit. _Oh Paulie_ , she thought, as, in a flurry of lavender ruffles, Maisie bestirred herself to rise and then to pat Emma, gently and ineffectually, on the back. _Your sister, my love, your beautiful piece-of-work sister._

"I'm all right," she said, recovering herself. "It's fine." She reached up to catch Maisie's hand; still it. Looped her other arm around her soft waist: palm pressed to lavender cotton. For probably a minute they sat there, in the front parlour which Maisie had designed herself. Did she actually believe the things she said, Emma wondered? She must hear them come out of her mouth. The long-slanting afternoon sunlight on the honey-stained maple of the built-in sideboard: it was a beautiful room. Maisie ran tentative fingers along Emma's hairline, and down toward her ear.

"I just can't tell," Maisie said. "You _always_ seem to know what you're about, but I can just. Never tell, when it's only me around the place. What to do for the best."

"I know," Emma said, and sighed. Honestly. What to say to such a person? "But it's the War. We all must—do our part. Help the Effort, and, you know. Each other."

A snuffly little noise. Emma tilted her head back, the angle odd. But it meant she could look up at Maisie; could smile at her, rubbing circles at her hip. And Maisie smiled down, a small thing and watery, the backs of her knuckles brushing Emma's cheek.


End file.
